The air is thick with cotton as we
walk, hand in hand, down the wobbly sidewalk filled with spider web cracks.
I lightly skip over them: I’m five years old and
don’t want to break my mother’s back.
We walk past the fairy’s house past the tree where my imaginary friend lives past the sledding hill past our neighbor that always has a
parrot
perched beside her on the front porch,
its squawks shatter the evening air
like broken glass.

The scratchy tulle of my pink tutu brushes against my legs,
my tank top, sticky on my skin,
my feet pounding the sidewalk. Grandma says I sound like a herd of elephants when I walk and
I love it.

Soon, the sherbert sunset will fade into darkness,
and I will curl covers over my head
as the hum of cicadas lulls me to sleep,
as pinpricks of starlight sneak through the curtains to spin around my room
like silver threads
weaving themselves into my dreams.
There, we still walk,
hand in hand,
into a wisteria breeze.

My grandmother and I,
our footsteps sound like heartbeats.